07-04-2012, 09:34 PM
Quote:No, the game isn't missing levels. That wouldn't change anything, just shift the goalposts further away. The biggest negative difference between D1/D2 and D3 is the replacement of player skill with gear checks. Everything we found "skillful" that we used to advance in earlier games with sub-par gear has been intentionally removed by Blizzard as being "unskillful," or at best "not fun," according to them. Diablo III is the first game in the series that has forced gear as a way of progression - indeed, the ONLY way
This is not true. I just had a tense elite fight in Inferno that I only won through kiting and some smart use of terrain and skills (leap between two levels, whale on isolated minions when I get the opportunity, time my furious charges to relocate between leap cooldowns, repeat). That fight took skill. This game definitely has room for player skill.
In fact, I will go so far to say that the skill system is far better than D2 in terms of encouraging skillfull play. Juggling your defensive cooldowns together with managing your offense is a lot more skillful than the mindless spam in a lot of the optimal D2 builds.
It's true that D3 has a much more gear dependent endgame than D2, but that's a consequence of trying to give the item hunt more meaning than just bigger numbers.
They need to fix the bland item game. Make items interesting and desirable, make it possible (and effective) to gear up in more ways than just primary/vit/crit/armor/resists (buffing the CC affixes would be a good place to start), make the affix pool more diverse and interesting, make legendaries not suck, these things will fix almost all of what people are complaining about.